Public Meeting Thursday 11th march

The Church at Innerwick in Glenlyon was the location for our public meeting. Its a really nice building, very simple with clean lines, but not plain at all. A large stained glass window provides a colourful backdrop as Fiona opens the meeting.
This meeting was initially to be held on the 25th of February, but the snow came hard that day across Perthshire and as the glen road remained unploughed, it seemed prudent to reschedule .
Around twenty people have come and we have received a further fifteen apologies. Its a good turnout, when your total population (probably) does not exceed 100. Everyone seems in a good mood, and pleasingly for me representatives of many of the various glen social strata are present.
Bernd Pinamonti of Thermotec is going to work with GWI throughout the project as a wood fuelled heating systems advisor. He has prepared 2 powerpoint presentations. The first one is about cultural and practical aspects of using wood as a fuel . Bernd talked about wood burning culture in the Upper Tyrol region of Austria, and showed pictures of a landscape that looked just like the glen, but with different houses and much less access for fuel deliveries in the winter months. In the Upper Tyrol wood burning is way of life and we saw some examples of this and of how people dry and prepare wood. Bernd's presentation described the wood fuel preparation process from forest to fire, with some great pictures of log (hay rick shaped) piles of wood drying

I spoke briefly on the proposed renewable Heating initiative (RHI) which will pay people about £270 for every ton of wood they burn ( average house, dry wood, burnt in an MCIS accredited boiler, etc). I also mentioned the overlap period that we are currently in whereby one can benefit from both the current 30% installation cost grant (old scheme) and the RHI one (new scheme).

Bernd then gave his second presentation which was about modern Woodburning technology, Logboilers and (wood) chip boilers were described in detail. The wood boilers that have been developed over recent years really are very impressive, with numerous self cleaning or self firing features.
Costs and site implications were also considered alongside some very illuminating tables on comparative fuel use and value. These presentations will be detailed by GWI at a future point.
There was a questions and answers session at the end and people asked some good questions, ones that showed understanding of the topic which was really good.
When the meeting is over we come out into a velvety black night full of stars, shining very brightly.